


The Scarlet Line

by mcdealth



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Fantasy, Fighting, Future, Gen, Magic, School, alternative universe, original - Freeform, powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 05:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13451649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcdealth/pseuds/mcdealth
Summary: Most of the world has some form of magical power, but that doesn't mean most of the world will use it responsibly.  That's where Scarlets come in.  Magical police, trained by the best their country has to offer in order to face the worst. But Rose isn't one of them. At least, not yet...I am attempting to write a chapter each week. They will be put up unfinished and edited throughout the week.





	1. Warning

I've never written a story before, so this is likely to be clunky. As in, I have no clue what's going to happen after the first chapter and the title was still unknown to me at the time of writing this bit. There's going to be garble and far too much conversation. I'd appreciate people who mildly know what they're doing to give me feedback on how to improve, which I will try to take on board in an attempt to become a better writer.

This can also be found on Wattpad. It's not very different, but yeah.


	2. The Job

Adam had always been trouble. Standing 6'2" and being damned handsome, of course he was trouble. Then again, that might be his "inflated sense of self worth" that Blue had mentioned on more than one occasion talking. Blue had a SERIOUS case of mad cow disease. Anyway, Adam had got into altercations with the law from the age of 14 after falling in with the right crowd. It must have been the right crowd, because without them, he wouldn't be doing what he did for a living now. Turning over stores to find ingredients for things he couldn't pronounce, getting people he'd never heard of into the right places, creating ways to get a hold of things he never even knew existed.... all for someone he'd never met. Blue was the middlewoman between them. He, she, or it sounded like bad news and was likely friends with the bogeyman, so while Adam was getting paid, he was fine with never meeting whatever _they_ were.

Tonight, Adam was tasked with snaffling a weapon. A specific weapon that, knowing what he'd procured before, would probably be very powerful. Looking at it in the case, it looked like the type of pistol a billionaire's wife would keep next to her rat dog. He smashed the case and grabbed it.

"Now what are you?" he muttered to himself. Then one of the thugs he brought with him tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and saw her out of the window, then sighed.

"You know, you guys are really something. _Really_ something. Distract her." The four goons looked at each other then walked outside.

***

Li watched as they approached. All four of them were armed with metal bats and looking surprisingly shaky. Suddenly, two of them looked at each other and tried to charge her. Li extended her own baton and dodged to the left, hitting it against the back of one of the first man's knee. He fell and Li dropped the second with an uppercut, then spun to kick the first before he got up. She turned to face the last two just as one of them summoned a fireball. Just before he threw it, she shunted the air he flew back into the shop window. The last man threw his bat and ran.

"Damnit!" exclaimed Adam, emerging from the shop. "Well, I was wondering what this thing did" he said, aiming the gun at her. Just before he fired, Li's partner John appeared and grabbed him, causing him to pull the trigger and uproot a lamppost. John twisted the gun out of his hand and threw him to the ground, handcuffing him.

"Explosive ammo. Now it makes sense why she was so specific" Adam laughed.

"We can talk in detail about that later, Adam Bren. You're under arrest." Li replied. 

Once again, Adam sighed.


	3. First Impressions

Rose walked in to the police station lobby and looked at the at the clock. She was 10 minutes early to her first class. Being early would probably be appreciated by the teachers.

"I take it you're here for the class?" the receptionist asked. Rose had completely forgotten it was there. She approached slowly.

"I am, yes" she answered. "Does it matter that I'm early?"

"No, two others arrived before you. They're waiting in the other room. What's your name?"

"Rose Dyers" she replied. The receptionist checked a register, ticked her name then motioned for her to go through. Rose thanked him, then walked into a room with chairs around the outside and pointy looking tree in one corner. The two others, who were sitting as far away from each other as they could, looked up as she entered. One was a guy with incredibly well kempt hair and the other was an unfriendly looking girl. Rose decided to sit closer to the guy.

***

The ten minutes passed and another four girls and three boys arrived. Rose looked around at the other students. Nine people total, excluding her, and seven of them were taller than her. She liked to reason that she wasn't small, they were just... big. At least they all looked nice. Well, apart from the girl that was in before her. She looked like she was going to fit in the most even though she hadn't done anything yet. The door opened and a woman called them through. She looked Spanish, maybe South American. The ten of them walked into a room that looked like some form of training hall and stood near a stage at the end of the room. The woman observed each of them individually.

"Welcome to the academy" she said. "My name is Elizabeth but you can call me Li to save time." She paused and looked at them again. "It's nice to have a bit of diversity for once. I'm sure that in the waiting room you all got to know each other really well." Nobody in the crowd said anything. Li nodded. " I thought as much. You'll all know each other with time." Li looked over to her left. "This is River" she said, motioning to a woman who Rose certainly didn't notice was there. "She's head of the academy. You'll be seeing her a lot but hopefully not in her office as she's the one who kicks you out." Rose looked at River again. She had dark hair and skin and couldn't be much over 30. River locked eyes with her, so Rose turned away. "Pleasantries aside, I'll show you where everything is. This way" Li said, walking to a door to the side of the stage. Rose looked back at River, but she was leaving through a different way.

"Did she give you the creeps too?" asked the girl nearest to Rose.

"Yeah" replied Rose. "She did."

***

The tour led them around around the building, which it turned out had an entire wing just for the trainees. They had their own cafeteria, toilets with far too many showers and a corridor filled with dorm style rooms. They even had a gym.

"These rooms will be used by you when you get put into pairs" Li explained. "That'll happen after two or three weeks. Until then you'll have to travel in. Now, about pairs. You'll be put with the person you seem to get on with the most." A few people looked at each other. "If it turns out you don't get on, you can agree to split up, but you won't be able to become a fully fledged officer by yourself, so unless you swap with other people, you'll have to wait for more recruits to catch up with you. Any questions?"

The scary girl raised her hand. "I take it the teams can be coed?" she asked in an undeniably Australian accent.

Li nodded. "If necessary." A couple of students looked worried. "Look, if you are in a mixed gender team, it's literally no different. Take it in turns in the shower, leave each other's stuff alone and don't get romantically involved, you don't need that sort of tension. You need to be grown ups in here. Is anyone incapable of that?" Nobody said anything. "Good. See you next week for your first class."

Everyone turned to leave and Rose saw her chance to talk to the girl from earlier again. She then realised she had no idea what to say.

"Hi" she said. The girl turned and smiled.

"Hi" she replied. She was American. Or... Canadian. "My name's Alice, but everyone calls me Jack. What's your name?"

"Rose." She thought for a second. "Wait, why would people call you Jack if your name's Alice?"

Jack laughed. "Jacqueline is my middle name. My parents are just weird." They reached the main entrance. "Do you need a ride? My sister is picking me up" Jack said. Rose considered it, but then remembered that she lived about five minutes away.

"No, it's ok, I can walk home from here. Thanks for offering though." They waved at each other, then Rose walked away. _Damn,_ Rose thought, _day one and I'm already impressing myself._ She struggled to contain a grin.

***

"So how did your first day go?" her mother asked as she walked in.

"Yeah, good" she replied. "Met the others in the class and the woman who I think is going to be teaching us. Oh and the head of the academy."

"And what did you think of them?"

Rose considered her response. "They're a mixture."

"Good or bad mixture?"

"Good. I think. The others all seem to know what they're doing. I guess I feel like an outcast."

"I'm sure you'll become friends with them eventually" her father said.

"I actually think I've made a friend already. She's called Jack. Well, she's called Alice, but..."

"She sounds nice enough" her mother said, almost crying from the onions she was cutting. "So when are you going back?"

"Next week at the same time. I'm going to go and get ready for dinner." She walked out of the kitchen and upstairs into her room. She looked around. Her room had always been tidy. If it was tidy, her mother wouldn't tidy it, and Rose would continue to know where everything was. She took her shoes off. Then she looked at her shoes. Rose knew she had the, as her father called it, "magical bone". She had been trying to practice her abilities since she applied to the training course. She reached her hand down to her shoes and concentrated on it, imagining it floating. She had a faint sound that was almost robotic and the shoe turned left by about three centimetres. She dropped her hand and groaned. She had heard of people being able to pick up cars, yet she couldn't even do a shoe. The others would probably be able to do so much more than her. At least she still had a week. She sighed, kicked the shoe, and started to get changed.


	4. Day One

Rose fell over, now beginning to wonder why she was putting herself through this. All of the excitement and fear that had built up, through the first tour of the place to receiving her training clothes today, had started to make her feel tired now that the actual event had started. The training dummy had backed up a couple of steps but was still in a fighting stance. The dummies were robots but had a strange soft texture to them so that they couldn't properly hurt you. The objective of the exercise was to get the dummy onto the ground as quickly as possible. They couldn't directly hit you, but that didn't stop them from flooring you. It was the instructors feeling out how advanced they were. Just as she was getting up, the guy with the nice hair, who Rose had learned from the register was called Ben, was flipped onto the ground. At least she wasn't the only one who was struggling. The dummy advanced slowly towards her. She tried to kick it in the stomach, but the dummy simply caught her foot. Out of ideas, Rose jabbed at its elbow. Its arm folded and it lost its grip on her foot, so she quickly grabbed it in a headlock and twisted to try and make it fall over, losing her own balance in the process and falling on top of it. She caught her breath, then rolled off of it. It got up and walked to the front. She'd done it. She was the fourth one as well. The first to do it was a big guy named Akio, the second was an equally big red haired girl whos name Rose had forgotten and third was the scary girl who was named Bonnie. Rose joined them by the stage and watched the others.

After about 5 more minutes, everyone had completed the trial.

Li checked her watch. "Good work everyone, especially those of you who have clearly never been in a fight in your life. Although we haven't really done that much so far, you're on break for half an hour, I've got some stuff to do." They all started to leave.

"I can't believe how well you did in that" Jack said.

Rose nodded. "Neither can I, but it wasn't supposed to be a competition."

"Life's a competition. They're already considering who they think will make it and who won't."

"Well, even though I came fourth, it was mostly a fluke. I'm probably fairly low down the scale at the moment."

Jack giggled. "Yeah, Li was definitely talking about you when she said 'those of you who've never been in a fight."

"Bitch, you weren't exactly incredible" Rose said, glaring at her. This just made Jack laugh even more.

***

Adam was bored. He'd been in a cell for two days now. The bed was rubbish, the toilet looked like it wanted to die and he'd lost all of his streaks. The Mexican had probably taken his phone just to spite him. At least that would probably alert Blue and the others to the fact that he had been captured. That he'd failed. _Oh no,_ he thought, _the boss is probably going to send that guy from Nightmare on Elm Street after me to silence me..._ One of the exterior doors opened and footsteps started to come down the corridor. Two sets of footsteps. At least whatever this was would take his mind off of his thoughts for a while. She appeared by his door with her buddy in tow.

"Hola, ese" he said with his terrible cockney accent. "I see you brought your amigo with you." She didn't seem impressed with his language skills.

"Hands" she said, holding a pair of handcuffs. He did as she asked and she opened the door. They led him down to an interrogation room.

He looked at them. "I've already told you everything I know."

The man nodded and said "we just want to make sure." He opened the door and Adam stepped inside. Only now did he notice that there was someone already inside. A woman.

"Sit down" she said, pointing to a seat. He looked at the one way mirror, then did as she commanded. She took a sip of coffee, staring him in the eye as she did so. It took a lot of self control for Adam not to look away. "So. You were caught stealing a firearm loaded with explosive rounds, something I highly doubt is seen in this country very often. Probably one of a kind. Why?"

"I've already told you. I was planning-"

"Yes, you did tell us that. So you were the boss of this group?"

Adam nodded.

She paused for a second. "That's funny. You don't strike me as a mastermind."

He swallowed. "And why's that?"

"The store had a back door. If you were planning something, as you claim, I would have thought you would have worked that into the equation."

"I never claimed I was any good." She moved her hand and suddenly he was gripped by the air. He slid across the table and stopped in front of her.

"Yet you knew the one place where the gun was. It was shipped there to be collected by an entirely different gang. A gang which has killed the powerful arms dealer who also happened to be high up in the Freemasons. The bullshit stops now. Someone wanted him gone. Why?" Adam was still in shock from being hailed halfway across the room.

"I have no idea." He felt something squeeze his neck.

"Nobody except your boss knows you're here. I really doubt they care. Do you want to protect them?"

"I don't know anything!"

"You do. You were in contact with someone. Give us a name."

He clutched at his neck. "I was talking to a woman who called herself Blue. That's the only name they gave."

The woman considered this, then sent him back into his chair.

"Thank you, Adam." She got up and walked out of the room, leaving him coughing.

***

Rose and Jack were in the canteen, talking to waste the break.

"So were you born in America?" Rose asked.

"Yeah, New York."

"I've always wanted to go to New York. What's it like?"

"Depends on where you go. There's places where you can get mugged and places where you can buy designer clothes. The worrying thing is, they're not all that far apart."

"You _definitely_ look like someone who was born in the mean streets."

Jack laughed. "No, I really wasn't. I was born into a fairly wealthy family. I only decided to join the police when my sister did it." Some of the others started to leave. "Yeah, we should probably get back" she said, checking her watch. They walked back to the room where Li was waiting for them, sitting in a chair on the stage. She looked up and counted them.

"Nice to see everyone back on time" she said, getting up. "Now I want to see what you can do with your powers."

"Oh no" Rose said to Jack. "I'm absolutely useless."

Jack looked at her. "You never know, you might get lucky again." They both tried not to laugh.

She signalled to a dummy which walked forward. "Before we start, does anyone want to demonstrate what they can do?" Everyone looked at each other, then Akio sighed and stepped up to the dummy. He cracked his knuckles, then swing a right hook into it's head. The dummy shimmered slightly on impact, then flew off of its feet.

"Thank you, Akio" Li said. He nodded, then walked back to the group. "What he just did was use the air to create an area around his hand which basically caused an explosion on contact. All of you have the ability to do this. Anyone else?" Nobody volunteered. "Another few basic things you all have the ability to do." She reached out towards the dummy and it lifted off of the ground. "Levitation." She put the dummy back down and thrust her hand towards it. It was launched across the room. "If used quickly enough, you can throw things, push people, blow doors off, etcetera." Suddenly, she blurred and appeared beside the dummy. "You can also use the air to move very fast. Some people prefer teleportation, others 'super speed'. I call it useful." She walked back towards them. "The possibilities are endless. You can walk up walls, pick locks and even fly. I can't guarantee the last one because I sprained my ankle the last time I tried, but you should all be able to teach yourselves eventually. Any questions?" Nobody put their hand up, mostly just in shock. "Well, I suppose we should get to work then."


	5. Team Players

11 days later

Rose stared into the dummy's creepy, blank face. It made her wonder how they could see, what with having no eyes and all.

"Remember, imagine that you're directly pushing it" Li said, standing behind them. Rose still hadn't made the damn thing move, yet others like Akio, Bonnie and Abbie (the big red haired girl, her and Rose had been talking quite a lot) could almost knock it down. Even Jack was decent. She felt a pressure on her as she was the only one who still couldn't do it. The fact that they were being watched by River wasn't helping either. She was sitting on the stage, looking almost like she was judging them. Then again, it was her job after all. Rose took a deep breath and focused on the dummy. She tried to imagine it right in front of her, like she could touch it. She pushed her hand towards it, and it took a step back. Frustrated, she tried to grip it with both hands. It was taken off of its feet, into a sitting position. Rose felt as if she was actually holding something. She dropped it and it fell onto its back.

"Everyone gather round" Li said, stepping up onto the stage. The ten of them walked over, all mildly sweaty. "You've been here for almost two weeks now. I'd hope that you've managed to get to know one another. We've been watching you, and you all seem capable, so we think it's time you start living here in your pairs." This started some chatter amongst the group. Li shushed them. "Me and the other tutors have chosen the groups we think you'll do the best in. She looked at the list. "Bonnie and Abbie." That one was fairly much a given, they worked well together. "Jack and Rose." They looked at each other excitedly. "Ben and Martin." Once again, they worked well together. " Akio and Elise." Akio was unfazed, but Elise looked slightly worried. "Lastly, Kate and Joe." Rose was fairly sure those two knew each other before the academy, so that was unsurprising. "Does anyone have any concerns?" All five pairs looked at each other, but no hands were raised. "Ok, come back next Friday at 10am. We'll assign you rooms and give you the access cards. Do you have anything to say?" she said, turning to River.

River paused. "All of you are doing this for different reasons. You're from different social circles, also different countries. Some of you have past discrepancies, one of you has even been in jail. But that's not what you should care about. You need to care about each other's progress, especially your partner's. Help each other and you'll get on fine together and eventually pass together. See you next Friday."


End file.
